Can art frame the city so that we understand and acknowledge the forces that shape it? Catherine Gudis, associate professor of history at University of California, Riverside, considers this through the artists’ group Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD). Comprised of Skid Row residents, LAPD directs attention to the invisible forces of urban design: poverty and gentrification, people and movement, police action and inaction, and spaces and buildings once shaped by architects and owners but whose larger meanings now lay elsewhere.

Make a Date with the Los Angeles City Historical Society! Join us on March 23 at 12:00 PM for lunch and a tour of the Mulholland Collection. The luncheon is $16 per person and includes the tour. Tour only: $5 for members, $10 for nonmembers. To RSVP and for more information, see our event flyer [pdf].

On February 25, the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West will host a symposium entitled, “The Significance of the Frontier in an Age of Transnational History.” This interdisciplinary symposium will be a discussion between leading scholars in fields across the humanities about the concept of the frontier in its global contexts. All roundtables and lectures are free and open to the public. To RSVP and for more information, please visit the ICW website.

The California Office of Historic Preservation is now accepting nominations for the 2012 Governor’s Historic Preservation Awards. The deadline for the receipt of nominations this year is May 11, 2012. OHP welcomes nominations of individuals who have made a difference; organizations that are helping California communities recognize and celebrate, interpret, or educate the larger community about the stories and artifacts that make them unique; and companies and public agencies that have exceeded expectations and contractual obligations in preserving the heritage of California. What is happening in your community that may be worthy of a Governor’s Historic Preservation Award?

Please join us Saturday as we kickoff the 2012 Marie Northrop Lecture Series.

Tom Zimmerman, author of Paradise Promoted: The Selling of Los Angeles 1870-1930, will be speaking on “Crafting the Image of Historic Los Angeles – The Myth and the Reality.”

The lecture is at 2:00 p.m. in the Mark Taper Auditorium of the Richard Riordan Central Library.

Parking: The Library Garage is located on the east side of Flower Street just south of 5th Street. With a library card and validation, parking is $1 after 1 PM.

Tom Zimmerman is a native of Los Angeles and shares his brithday with the City. His prose has been published in various journals and his photography has been published and exhibited nationally. He has published three books of photographs and has written two historial books.